Sir Herbert Henry Bartlett, 1st Baronet (30 April 1842 – 23 June 1921) was a civil engineer and contractor responsible for many landmark buildings in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

Life

Bartlett was born at

Hardington Mandeville Hardington Mandeville is a village and civil parish in Somerset, England, situated south west of Yeovil in the South Somerset district. The village has a population of 585. History The Hardington part of the name of the village means ''settle ...

. Aged 23, he joined Perry & Company, a civil engineering contractor founded by East End carpenter John Perry, based in Bow, east London, in 1865. He became a partner in the business in 1872, and after the death of Perry's three sons, became sole proprietor in 1888. In 1897, Bartlett signed a £877,000 contract to construct a deep tube under the Thames from Waterloo to Baker Street - part of the present-day

Bakerloo Line The Bakerloo line () is a London Underground line that goes from in suburban north-west London to in south London, via the West End. Printed in brown on the Tube map, it serves 25 stations, 15 of which are underground, over . It runs partly ...

. Bartlett was president of the Institute of Builders and the London Master Builders Association, and three times Master of the Worshipful Company of Pattenmakers. He was made a

Baronet A baronet ( or ; abbreviated Bart or Bt) or the female equivalent, a baronetess (, , or ; abbreviation Btss), is the holder of a baronetcy, a hereditary title awarded by the British Crown. The title of baronet is mentioned as early as the 14t ...

in 1913. He married Ada Charlotte Barr, and had several children. He lived from 1900 at Cornwall Gardens in west London.'Cornwall Gardens', in Survey of London: Volume 42, Kensington Square To Earl's Court, ed. Hermione Hobhouse (London, 1986), pp. 151-157 http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol42/pp151-157 ccessed 19 December 2015 He is buried in the family grave, which lies in the western half of

Highgate Cemetery Highgate Cemetery is a place of burial in north London, England. There are approximately 170,000 people buried in around 53,000 graves across the West and East Cemeteries. Highgate Cemetery is notable both for some of the people buried there as ...

in north

on the main central path, just below the entrance to the Egyptian Avenue. On his death his baronetcy passed to his grandson, Basil, as his two eldest sons had predeceased him (Herbert Evelyn Barlett, 1875–1917, and Hardington Arthur Bartlett 1877–1920, lost at sea).

Memorials

In 1911, he gave £30,000 to

University College London , mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £143 million (2020) , budget = ...

to fund a new building for the School of Architecture, along with the Department of Applied Statistics and studios for the teaching of sculpture. The donation was initially anonymous, but in 1919 he consented to his name being revealed, and

The Bartlett ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...

(the Faculty of the Built Environment) now bears his name. Bartlett also made a sizeable donation to

Ernest Shackleton Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton (15 February 1874 – 5 January 1922) was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of ...

's first voyage to

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...

, where the explorer named a peak 'Mount Bartlett' after him.

Notable works

Bartlett's contracts and designs included: *

30 St Mary Axe 30 St Mary Axe (previously known as the Swiss Re Building and informally known as the Gherkin) is a commercial skyscraper in London's primary financial district, the City of London. It was completed in December 2003 and opened in April 2004. ...

* the rebuilt

Waterloo station Waterloo station (), also known as London Waterloo, is a central London terminus on the National Rail network in the United Kingdom, in the Waterloo area of the London Borough of Lambeth. It is connected to a London Underground station of t ...

* St Thomas' Hospital (his 1896 building was rebuilt in the 1970s) * improvements at Somerset House * various stations on the

London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or by its nickname the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The ...

between Baker Street and Waterloo * part of

Tower Bridge Tower Bridge is a Grade I listed combined bascule and suspension bridge in London, built between 1886 and 1894, designed by Horace Jones and engineered by John Wolfe Barry with the help of Henry Marc Brunel. It crosses the River Thames clos ...

Bartlett was also a keen yachtsman, being

commodore Commodore may refer to: Ranks * Commodore (rank), a naval rank ** Commodore (Royal Navy), in the United Kingdom ** Commodore (United States) ** Commodore (Canada) ** Commodore (Finland) ** Commodore (Germany) or ''Kommodore'' * Air commodore ...

of the

Royal London Yacht Club Royal may refer to: People * Royal (name), a list of people with either the surname or given name * A member of a royal family Places United States * Royal, Arkansas, an unincorporated community * Royal, Illinois, a village * Royal, Iowa, a ...

References and sources

;References ;Sources *''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'' Obituary 4 Jul 1921
The Peerage: Sir Herbert Henry Bartlett, 1st Bt.
Retrieved 2012-11-08 * 1842 births 1921 deaths English civil engineers Baronets in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom Burials at Highgate Cemetery {{England-engineer-stub